Knowledge is Power

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Fraud is big business. Companies in other countries steal American
intellectual property, counterfeit goods and violate copyrights all the time
and this costs Americans and American companies 500 to 700 billion dollars a
year in lost revenue. Counterfeiting and piracy are a growing problem that
translates to almost a million American jobs lost each year. People think that stealing
content doesn't affect them directly but it does.

It’s not just Asian countries like China that are stealing from the
USA there are US companies and businesses that are complicit in the theft of
copyrighted material. They profit either
by reselling pirated or forged materials or they are hosting internet sites for
the sale of these violators. Galleries and art brokers buy this stuff wholesale
and then resell it. If you are an artist in a gallery and you have seen or know
about this going on in the gallery then you are as much a part of the problem
as the people doing it directly. As Edmond Burk said “the only thing necessary for thetriumph ofevil is for good men to do nothing.”

Watch this video about an aspen gallery allegedly using Chinese made copies
of known artists works to sell to unsuspecting buyers whose only concern is a
cheaper price than the original.

Places like the city of Dafen in China copy thousands of works of
art a year selling them at a penny on the dollar to unscrupulous galleries in
the USA.

Look at this company
selling large paintings by known artists that would normally sell in the tens
of thousands of dollars for less than 100 dollars.

Artists need to contact their representatives in government and
tell them that these kinds of business dealing must be stopped. We must hold
the American companies that are complicit in these thefts liable and shut them
down and expose them for the criminals they are.